The only known predictor of success in learning a second language is this: motivation. There are lots of things that you have no control over whatsoever that can tip the odds in your favor a little bit–already being bilingual, having had exposure to native languages other than your own in childhood, being quite young when you begin–but, in the end, the only thing with enough of an effect to be predictive is having sufficient motivation.

What do you do with that motivation? Everyone who’s successful at second language acquisition develops their own tricks. But, there are two things that are essential–without them, it’s just not going to happen. You must use your motivation to make yourself do two things:

Memorize an enormous amount of vocabulary. Knowing a sufficient amount of the grammar of the language is necessary, but it’s having lexical items (words) to plug into those grammatical structures that makes the difference between being able to function in the language, or not. And: if you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that it’s a very basic fact about the statistics of language that you need to memorize not just the common words, but an enormous amount of rare words, too–because about 50% of the words that you will run into on any given day are going to be statistically of very low frequency. (That’s the Zipf’s Law in the title of this blog.)

You have to be able to tolerate feeling like an idiot. Specifically, you must use your motivation to force yourself to take the opportunities that you get to practice the language that you’re trying to learn.

I happen to know from experience that you can feel really stupid without (so far, at least, in my case) dying from it.

This month finds me in Wuhan, a city in roughly central China of 10 million inhabitants, essentially none of whom are occidentals. There’s a charming aspect to this–people will literally ask me to pose for pictures with their children. Fat, bald old me. There being no occidentals here to speak of, the people in stores, restaurants, etc. rarely speak English, so studying Mandarin (or the local dialect, which is not mutually intelligible with Mandarin) is a necessity.

If you have not tried to live with just a tiny bit of a language, you might be surprised how little you can get by with. For example, a couple days ago I had my first Mandarin conversation. It involved dropping off my laundry, and went like this:

Me: Míng tiān ma? (Tomorrow?)

Nice laundry lady:Míng tiān. (Tomorrow.)

Now, after a couple weeks of me struggling to communicate in Mandarin when dropping off my laundry, the laundresses du coin are a lot less nervous about dealing with a hairy barbarian and have progressed to giggling and trying to teach me new words. Strangers: a different story.

Today I’m sunning on a terrace with a cup of coffee (a luxury here–that cup of coffee cost more than the large, delicious, and healthy meal that I had just eaten) when I notice a couple girls adjusting, readjusting, and re-readjusting their…berets. Not a huge shocker, as the stereotypical Parisian tourist is now Chinese, but still: they were looking at each other’s berets, then looking at their own berets using their cell phone cameras in lieu of mirrors (yes, in lieu of is English), then looking at each other’s berets, then touching up their lipstick, and then starting all over again.

Obviously I needed a picture of this, but how to get it? I mean, it’s not like you can go around taking photos of women you don’t know without risking an ass-kicking. Ah–but, at 56, I am totally accustomed to making a fool of myself. We have the following (one-sided) conversation:

Them: Speaking to each other for a while, then looking at me like I’m insane, or an idiot, or both.

Me: Patting myself on the chest:wǒ fǎ guó rén (‘I am French’). Pointing at each of their hats:fǎ guó, fǎ guó (‘France, France’). Then I mime taking a picture with my camera. (Yes, this is exactly what I said the first time.)

Them:Talking to each other again for a while, then they shrug at each other–and pose for a couple pictures.

Me:Xiè xie (‘thank you’).

Them: Walking away in silence. Do I want to know what they’re thinking? Definitely not.

Now, bear in mind: the purpose of my relating this attempt at conversation is not to brag about how great my Mandarin is. The opposite–the point is how bad (nonexistent, really) my Mandarin is. And yet: I know that…

…if I’m willing to keep making a fool out of myself, I might actually get comfortable with the language (in, say, SEVERAL YEARS), and…

…if I’m not willing to keep making a fool out of myself, I will never get comfortable with the language, and…

…making a fool out of myself did not kill me. Embarrassing? Yes. Fatally so? No.

Two beret-wearing Huazhong Agricultural University students being very tolerant of a fat old bald guy outside the Luckin Coffee cafe. Picture source: me.

So, the next time you’re trying to work up the courage to practice your language of choice, just remember this: at least you’re not a fat old bald guy like that funny-sounding Zipf fella.

Scroll down for the English notes!

English notes

sitzfleisch: The perseverance to just sit and plug along at a task. I learned it from my master’s thesis advisor, who often pointed out that two hours in the library can save you four months in the lab–suddenly the word has become popular. I have no clue why.

a couple: ‘a couple of.’ This is one of those things that other native speakers give me shit for saying. What can I tell you–like my hero Tonya Harding, I’m Oregonian trailer trash. And, yes–you should go see the movie. It’s really good.

]]>https://zipfslaw.org/2018/11/04/you-wont-learn-to-speak-another-language-unless/feed/230.477559 114.34823930.477559114.348239IMG_1460zipfslaw1440px-Zipf_30wiki_en_labelsIMG_1460I am the walrus, Part Ihttps://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/25/walrus-anatomy-in-french-1/
https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/25/walrus-anatomy-in-french-1/#commentsThu, 25 Oct 2018 21:33:35 +0000http://zipfslaw.org/?p=31153It’s 4 AM where I am, and I’m awake and definitely not getting back to sleep, and for the first time in several weeks I have no looming deadlines, so let’s do the obvious thing: talk about French vocabulary related to walruses.

Marine mammals (mammifères marins) are anatomically unusual for a number of reasons, one of which is their teeth: in general, they tend to be homodonts, meaning that their teeth are all of the same kind. Walruses have their tusks, which are very different from the rest, but the rest of their teeth are pretty much undifferentiated. Here’s a photo of a walrus mandible–note that the teeth are all pretty similar:

…and another marine mammal, the orca or killer whale (go ahead and try to find a better picture than this of orca teeth without spending 15 minutes plowing through memorabilia of the movie Jaws–go ahead, I dare you…). Like the dolphin, this fellow is a total homodont–all of his teeth are the same:

So, you compare a morse to your typical mammifère marin and they look well-endowed in the tooth variety department, but compare ’em to a primate or a feline and they look pretty impoverished. And what are those tusks (défenses) for?

traîner: a verb that never fails to fuck me up… I think that in this case it’s the sense of dragging (Je traîne la table dans la pièce voisine,WordReference.com) or of hanging down to a lower level (Les rideaux traînent sur le sol de la salle, WordReference.com). I have a lot of trouble with traîner, which I associate always and only with what you should not do when there are zombies around (Traînez pas, y’a des zombies partout (sorry if the French is wrong–I just made that up).).

le sédiment: …just ’cause I didn’t know about the accent, nor the gender.

creuser: another one of those verbs that has a thousand senses. I think that this is the one that WordReference gives as “to dig,” although I think that it might be closer to to furrow. Do you creuser a hole, or something longer in one direction than the other, like a sillon, or a creux, or a fossé? Native speakers?

s’user: …because this verb is so confusing for us poor anglophones: it means to get worn out, worn down, worn thin.

s’alimenter: …just ’cause it’s such a pretty verb, and I wanna remind myself to use it.

…and with that, it’s 5:20 AM, and my sleep deprivation is nearing psychosis-level, and I’m definitely not getting back to sleep, and my sleep deprivation is nearing psychosis-level, and I couldn’t get the pictures of walrus-calf teeth to upload (they have deciduous (“milk”) teeth, which makes for a very confusing picture, and how the fuck do you say “milk teeth” in French?), and my sleep deprivation is nearing psychosis-level, and we haven’t even gotten around to the walrus’s wrist structure, and my sleep deprivation is nearing psychosis-level, and je laisse à part les fièvres et les pleurésies, et…

]]>https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/25/walrus-anatomy-in-french-1/feed/3ezgif.com-gif-makerzipfslaw1walrus-mandibledolphin-teethorque-cranepgb_mammal_teeth_notxt.jpgComment parler à un alien ?https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/24/comment-parler-a-un-alien/
https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/24/comment-parler-a-un-alien/#commentsWed, 24 Oct 2018 00:23:38 +0000http://zipfslaw.org/?p=31149I got this message this morning via an email list for francophone specialists in natural language processing, the use of computers to do things with language. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll probably find it interesting, and it has some grammatical constructions and vocabulary items that I don’t understand, so if you’re an anglophone reader, you might learn something from it, as I did… I’ve interspersed my comments with the text of the email, and the vocabulary notes show up at the end of the post, after the email.

Is the family name Lehoucq composed of le + houcq? Not as far as I can tell—I haven’t found dictionary entries for houcq, houc, or houq. If it is, indeed, so composed,apparently the h of houcq was an h aspiré, or we would see l’houcq, right??

This paragraph contains lots of instances of that pronimal bugaboo of us anglophones, en. S’en faire comprendre: where does that en come from? Is it an anaphor for “by them”? Native speakers? The en of La science fiction…en a fait l’un de ses sujets de predilection seems straightforward-ish: I think it refers back to le langage in the preceding sentence. (By the way: most computer programs for “resolving” anaphora would get this one wrong, basically because they typically don’t look as far back as the beginning of a preceding sentence, or if they do, they tend to prefer to guess that the referent is at the end of the preceding sentence, if there is a candidate (in this case, une importance cruciale) at the end of the preceding sentence as well as one at the beginning.

Question: as far as I know, French—unlike English, where it’s possible but definitely optional–generally repeats the preposition when there’s a conjoined phrase “to talk about science and understand our world”); if I’m right about that, then why does the paragraph contain pour parler de sciences et comprendre notre monde, rather than pour parler de sciences et pour comprendre notre monde, which is what I would have expected?

The English translation on WordReference seems right for their example sentence, but not for their French-language definition of enchâssement. Maybe châsse has a meaning besides the one that I know, which is a synonym of reliquaire? Not according to WordReference, whose English-language translation is, once again, at odds with their French-language definition: the French-language definition is coffret pour reliques précieuses, but they translate châsse into English as shrine, when it should be reliquary.

]]>https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/24/comment-parler-a-un-alien/feed/7comment-parler-a-un-alienzipfslaw1American English reading practice: John McCain, Trump, and torturehttps://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/14/american-english-reading-practice-john-mccain-trump-and-torture/
https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/14/american-english-reading-practice-john-mccain-trump-and-torture/#commentsSun, 14 Oct 2018 17:14:30 +0000http://zipfslaw.org/?p=31146John McCain was shot down and held prisoner for 5 and a half years by the North Vietnamese. He never recovered physically from the frequent and lengthy torture sessions that he underwent. The son of an admiral, he was offered early release, but refused to be set free until all of his fellow prisoners were. Meanwhile, Trump avoided the draft, later bragged about it repeatedly in public, and attacked McCain repeatedly as a candidate and as president. Asshole.

For more on a proud US military veteran’s opposition to Trump’s immoral ideas about torture, see this post. Do you have corrections for my crappy French? The Comments section awaits you.

Speaking out on torture and a Trump nominee, ailing McCain roils Washington

to speak out:to say something by way of a public statement, typically criticizing something. Note that the preposition here is on, but it could also be about, and possibly others.

ailing: sick. If English had the concept of langage soutenu, this would be soutenu, like many of the words in this article.

to roil:to stir up, to disturb, to put in a state of disorder (see Merriam-Webster, sense 2)

Sen. John McCain is 2,200 miles from Washington and hasn’t been on Capitol Hill in five months, but he showed this week that he remains a potent force in national politics and a polarizing figure within the Republican Party.

potent:powerful

polarizing: “to break up into opposing factions or groupings: a campaign that polarized the electorate” (Merriam-Webster, sense 3). Today’s Republican Party can generally be divided into people who like McCain, a war hero and basically OK guy right up to his recent death–versus immoral shitbags who cravenly support Trump no matter how low he stoops into the mud. Thus: he’s a polarizing figure within the party.

But his declaration Wednesday in opposition to Gina Haspel, President Trump’s nominee for CIA director, has uniquely roiled the political scene. The denunciation has prompted reactions from fellow senators and a former vice president, as well as intemperate remarks from some Republicans aligned with Trump, including a White House aide.

intemperate: not temperate, where “temperate” means “a: keeping or held within limits : not extreme or excessive : MILD; : marked by an absence or avoidance of extravagance, violence, or extreme partisanship” (Merriam-Webster, senses 2a and 2d)”

It has revived the fierce debate over torture and its effectiveness in extracting information in the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — from a man who speaks from experience. McCain was held for 5½ years in a North Vietnamese prison, often deprived of sleep, food and medical care, after a jet he piloted was shot down over Hanoi.

No need for translation here, but for context, it’s worth knowing that McCain was a war hero and a staunch supporter of the US military–and hugely, vocally opposed to torture. In contrast, Trump the draft-dodger (réfractaire, I think) has long advocated it. Asshole.

]]>https://zipfslaw.org/2018/10/14/american-english-reading-practice-john-mccain-trump-and-torture/feed/2zipfslaw1sen-john-mccain-tty-04-gty-jef-170718_hpEmbed_1_18x13_992What a linguist would name a store if a linguist owned a storehttps://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/29/what-a-linguist-would-name-a-store-if-a-linguist-owned-a-store/
https://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/29/what-a-linguist-would-name-a-store-if-a-linguist-owned-a-store/#commentsSat, 29 Sep 2018 21:39:48 +0000http://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/29/what-a-linguist-would-name-a-store-if-a-linguist-owned-a-store/Continue reading "What a linguist would name a store if a linguist owned a store"]]>

to delight in: to really enjoy doing something; to like a thing very, very much. Examples:

Trump delights in insulting people who are less powerful than he is. Fucking bully–nothing more despicable than a fucking bully.

Trump delights in his ability to insult women’s appearance on the world stage. What a loser.

How it’s used on the sign: Delight in treasures old and new.

Brought to you by the Anglophone Association for the Promotion of Weird Prepositions.

Thanks to the person who posted this on my Facebook timeline–you shall remain anonymous, since you probably would not want it known that you know me far too well.

English notes

This little gem of humor about the realities of translation/interpretation uses a number of devices from very colloquial written English. Three of them:

Wanna:want to. “Now I really wanna see a horrible faltering translation from one of these movies…”

Cuz: because. Can also be written ’cause or cos, and cuz can also be “cousin.”

The thingis: This is used to introduce an assertion that … hm… states some kind of problem or complication with whatever it is that is under discussion. For example: Zipf, are you going to the lab meeting? Well…the thing is, I double-booked myself at 1. In the material, when the person says (I’m going to insert some punctuation, which will make it a lot easier to follow) the thing is, in one dialect this word is the name of a terrifying Demon but in a completely different language from the same area that… the “thing under discussion,” if you like, is the fact that the person is being expected to be able to translate this stuff (but there’s this complication related to the multiple possible meanings of the word in question).

Note that if you’re being really casual, you can shorten this to just thing is… omitting the “the.”

Zipf’s Law: The frequency of a word is related exponentially to its rank in a frequency-ordered list. Practically speaking, this means that an adult studying a second language will run across words that they don’t know every day of their life.

To paraphrase Newton: if I speak better French than other Americans, it is only because I spend more time memorizing vocabulary. My daily, daily, daily morning ritual: with my first cigarette and cup of coffee, I memorize 10 new words. Zipf’s Law being what it is, I don’t exactly have to go hunting for words that I don’t know—over the course of the day, I note down every new word that I come across, and the next morning, I pick 10 of them to cram into the small amount of remaining space in my much-abused brain.

Every once in a while, though, it does not yield the desired result. Case in point: capillotracté. Not in Word Reference, not in Farlex French. So: Google… which gets me definitions that I don’t understand, because they make reference to an expression that I don’t understand: tirer quelqu’un par les cheveux. And so, dear Readers: can you help an amerloque out?

My odyssey started in a place where you don’t expect to see casual use of language: Le Figaro. The Fig’ is one of the Big 3 French newspapers, along with Libération (left) and Le Monde (center). As you have probably guessed, Le Figaro is to the right of center. Like many conservative people, it gets excited about prescribing language usage. I don’t get excited about prescribing language usage, but I do get excited about language, so although I subscribe to Le Monde (I’m a lefty myself, but I figure that I’ll get the most representative sample of vocabulary more towards the center), I will often go to the Fig’ to read its language articles. As you might expect from prescriptivists, they tend to be…precise. Clear. Unambiguous. (Si ce n’est pas clair, ce n’est pas français, right? Harumph.).

So, I’m reading an article on the subject of how to refer to Line 1 of the Paris metro—ligne un, or ligne une?—when I come across a word that I don’t know. I promptly copy it, along with the context in which I saw it, onto an index card (something that does not exist in France–see this post on the mystery):

The next morning, I go to look it up–and find nothing. Word Reference: no love. The Farlex French dictionary app: nope. Fine–I go to Google. I find definitions there, but they all refer to an expression whose meaning is opaque to me: tirer quelqu’un par les cheveux. For example:

How about it, native speakers? Can you help an amerloque out? I’d pull my hair out over this, but I’m already bald…

The rule dit capillotracté? Ligne un, because it’s a number, not the indefinite article. The indefinite article un/une is inflected for gender, but the number un is not.

French notes

l’amerloque: American, person or language; noun or adjective. Familier et péjoratif.Wiktionnaire alleges that it comes from Amérique plus oque, providing no evidence; I therefore claim equal plausibility for my own little theory, which is that it comes from Amérique plus locuteur. Examples from Wiktionnaire, from which I stole them quite gleefully ’cause I don’t like their etymology:

makeover: “An overalltreatment to improvesomething or makesomethingmoreattractive or appealing.” (Source: American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. (2011). Retrieved September 11 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/makeover.) There is an enormous quantity of makeover-themed TV shows. Don’t judge me.

consult (noun): As a noun, this is stressed on the first syllable: CONsult. A consult is when you send someone or something to an expert, typically in a medical context. For example, if you go to your doctor and they are pretty sure that you are having a neurological problem, they might tell their clerk to set you up with a neurology consult.

In coming up with a title for this article, I thought about Vocabulary consult versus Vocabulary makeover. The former would make a hell of a lot more sense, but since the word that I’m asking you to help me with has something to do with hair, I went for Vocabulary makeover. Don’t like my choice? Write your own fucking blog on the implications of the statistical properties of language for second-language learners.

to pull one’s hair out (over something): to have reached the point of frustration with a problem and still be unable to solve it. Examples:

Bill, can you help me? I’m pulling my hair out here… Every time I call the constructor, I get a “String Index Out Of Bounds” error, which makes no sense to me whatsoever…

Dude, I’m pulling out my hair out over this budget. Every time I try to include the annual COL increase for salaries, the spreadsheet doubles the amount allotted for travel to the American Medical Informatics Association annual meeting. What the FUCK??

How I used it in the post: How about it, native speakers? Can you help an amerloque out? I’d pull my hair out over this, but I’m already bald…

]]>https://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/11/vocabulary-makeover-please/feed/6img_5302zipfslaw1img_0545img_0546img_0547What’s making me happy today: Rarotonganhttps://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/08/whats-making-me-happy-today/
https://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/08/whats-making-me-happy-today/#commentsSat, 08 Sep 2018 13:16:41 +0000http://zipfslaw.org/2018/09/08/whats-making-me-happy-today/…’cause how often do you come across your copy of Mana Strickland’s “Say It In Rarotongan”?

This morning I brushed my teeth with coffee because I couldn’t find any clean water. It got me thinking how nice it would be if You would help everybody have clean water. Don’t get me wrong–I do love coffee, and brushing your teeth with it actually works pretty well! But, there are a lot of kids around here, and I’ll bet that it would be really nice for them to have clean water every day.

To give You some context: Guatemala does not have national-level regulation of anything related to water–availability, safety, or anything else that I’ve been able to find. Having a water connection into your home is nowhere near universal in cities, and in rural areas, it’s less common than using a well or other naturally-occurring water source: 52% of the rural population lives in residences that are not connected to a water supply, as does 13% of the urban population (see this paper). The groundwater here can be contaminated with arsenic, as can clay water filters. Bacterial and viral contaminants abound–coliform bacteria, norovirus, cholera, hepatitis A, typhoid–You name it, we’ve got it. Your children here do try to take care of themselves in this respect, but it’s technically difficult–one study here of homes that boil their drinking water found that 29% of boiled water still has unsafe levels of fecal bacteria. (If You really wanna get freaked out, note that the clay filters that some households (and the vast majority of visitors such as myself) rely on here lose their “disinfection efficacy” over time, and there is exactly no way whatsoever to evaluate this by looking at them.) The number of ways that Your children’s water supply can get contaminated is far larger than I would have guessed, including–ironically, I think–heavy rainfall, which can wash nasty stuff into wells.

Original photo caption: “Wells without headwalls such as this one can easily fill with foul water. They also present a fall risk for young children, as has been reported by residents.” Source: Eisenhauer et al. 2016, https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/45/3/677/2572651

I know that You are busy, but if You have a bit of free time on your hands, this would be a cool thing to pay attention to. As I mentioned, brushing your teeth with coffee actually works pretty well. But, Your children here are really trying–if You could help a bit with this and the many other medical problems that plague this country, it would be super-cool.

Yours,

Beauregard Zipf

English notes

you name it: an expression means something like anything whatsoever, anything that you can think of. Some examples:

Dear literary community:

Take care of your fellow writers, even or especially after they’ve published a book. I’ve noticed writers disappear after the publication of a book because of self-doubt, isolation, depression, anxiety, insomnia, you name it. Reach out to them, always.

I find it maddening when people say they don’t drink coffee. Like WHY. HOW. I would die without coffee. And there are SO many variations to choose from. Espresso, cappuccino, latte, iced coffee, mocha, macchiato, Frappuccino you name it it is all HEAVEN

I can’t wait to be known as the Sheriff of Wall Street, the Nightwatchwoman, the Avenger: you name it. The New York Attorney General must be the regulator of last resort and protect New Yorkers from financial frauds and consumer rip-offs and out of control speculators. https://t.co/nL9U6kBzvj

How I used it in the post: Bacterial and viral contaminants abound–coliform bacteria, norovirus, cholera, hepatitis A, typhoid–You name it, we’ve got it.

Once a year I spend a week as an English/Spanish interpreter in Guatemala with Surgicorps, a group that providers free surgical services to people for whom even the almost-free national health care system is still too expensive. If you enjoy my posts from “Guate,” please consider supporting our work here. Our volunteers pay all of the costs of their own involvement–we buy our own plane tickets, pay for our food and lodging, etc., and donate all of our services. Your donation goes straight to supporting surgeries, pre- and post-op care for our patients, and lodging for the family members that accompany them here. You don’t have to give much to help a lot–$250 US pays all of the costs of surgery for one patient, and $10 US pays for all of the pain medications that we will send patients home with the entire week. Follow this link to donate–a small donation is a great way to make your day better!

]]>https://zipfslaw.org/2018/08/16/water-in-guatemala/feed/3safe_imagezipfslaw1dyw026f3pThe motor homunculus goes to Guatemalahttps://zipfslaw.org/2018/08/12/motor-homunculus/
https://zipfslaw.org/2018/08/12/motor-homunculus/#commentsSun, 12 Aug 2018 17:03:43 +0000http://zipfslaw.org/?p=31085The odd guy in this picture? He’s “the motor homunculus.” The picture represents the proportions of the motor cortex that are dedicated to controlling the movements of the parts of our body whose movements we can control. The motor cortex is a part of the outer layer of the brain that is used for controlling movement. Note that not all parts of the body get equal amounts of brain dedicated to them. Some get more than others, and the relative sizes of the body parts in the picture reflect those unequal amounts. Which parts get the most?

The organs of speech

The hand

For decades, people like me have been showing this figure to our Linguistics 101 students and saying: you can tell how important the organs of speech are because as much of the motor cortex is devoted to them as to the control of our hands. Neurologist Frank Wilson sees it the other way around, though. His take on it: you can tell how important the hands are because as much of the motor cortex is devoted to them as to the control of our organs of speech. I like that–it’s always interesting when people see things the opposite of the way that I do.

How do we know how much of the brain is devoted to any organ? It all goes back to a Canadian-American neurosurgeon by the name of Wilder Penfield. Penfield was a pioneer of modern brain surgery. He developed a procedure for treating epilepsy by finding the region of the patient’s brain from which the unfortunate electrical storms originate, and destroying it. When you’re doing this, you don’t want to destroy a part of the brain that carries out some irreplaceable function, so Penfield developed a procedure for stimulating parts of a patient’s brain and watching what happened.

The oropharynx–just the beginning of the sophisticated and complicated process of swallowing. Spelling error: that should be PHARYNGEAL wall. Source: https://goo.gl/eBxzQJ

Now, I know what you’re thinking: but, you can’t see everything that might happen–it’s not like you can watch someone’s pharynx and see what part of the brain we use to control the incredibly complicated process of swallowing a bite of pizza. That’s a good point. As Dr. Peter Pressman, a neurologist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told me:

You’re right, Zipf–he didn’t exactly pull up each individual muscle. More like “hand, arm, throat, etc.” His was a rough map, though revolutionary at the time. It turns out that more recent work using functional magnetic resonance imaging has led to essentially the same findings–Penfield’s work was amazing.

The take-home point: whether you’re a linguist like me and want to focus on the organs of speech, or a physician who wants to focus on the hand, the amount of brain “real estate” that is devoted to each of them reflects the fact that both of them are central to being a human being.

Dr. Courtney Retzer-Vargo making a splint.

Once a year I travel to Guatemala with Surgicorps, a group of surgeons, therapists, nurses, and anesthesiologists who spend a week donating free surgical services for people for whom the almost-free national health care system is too expensive. We bring with us specialists who can perform techniques that are beyond the skills of the local surgeons. The team includes Dr. David Kim, who specializes in hand surgery, and Dr. Courtney Retzer-Vargo, an occupational therapist who specializes in rehabilitation of the hand. These are both exceptionally rare skill sets–Dr. Kim did two separate four-year fellowships (in plastic surgery and in orthopedics) to learn his trade, and Dr. Retzer-Vargo is one of a very small number of people in the world with her specialized skills. Their work is an important part of what we do because giving someone back the ability to use their hands can mean keeping them alive in this country where most work is manual labor, and if you don’t work, you starve–as do your children.

Surgicorps members pay for their own travel, lodging, and food on these missions–and donate a week of vacation time (that’s a lot in the United States), as well as their professional services. Donations from generous people like you go entirely to covering the costs of the surgeries and pre- and post-operative care. This includes supplies, oxygen and anesthetic gases, medications, lab work, and lodging for the family members who accompany them on the long trip to the facility out of which we work. To give you some perspective: the cost of surgery for one patient works out to $250. $100 pays for four surgical packs. $10 pays for all of the pain medications that we will send our patients home with this week. Want to help? Follow this link to make a donation–you’ll be surprised at how good it will make you feel.

English notes

homunculus: a small man. The concept of tiny little people was an important but wrong idea about how exactly our physical bodies get made: before we actually knew anything about embryology, the idea that we start out as so-tiny-that-we’re-invisible fully formed humans whose development consists simply of getting bigger seemed to make about as much sense as anything else. (This idea is known as preformation–see the Wikipedia article about it for its history.)

Later conceptions of the homunculus have focussed on the extent to which we can think of it as a “representation” of the human–something that lets us think logically about people by simplifying them down to the elements that are essential to whatever it is that we’re trying to figure out about them. For example, the motor homunculus simplifies the human to a set of purposeful movements. Every representation has its benefits–in this case, the ability to have a 1200-word discussion about what the brain can tell us about the parts of humans that are most important to making them…human. Representations also have their costs. For example, representing an entire human being as a motor homunculus doesn’t let us say anything about why a human might want to move something. Life always has its trade-offs–how about trading a few of your spare dollars/euros/quetzales for the warm feeling of contributing to Surgicorps making it possible for a woman to cook her child’s tortillas in the morning, or for a man to earn the money to send that child to school? Click here to donate.